Here is my good-news journalism story, from Abu Dhabi.

Three weeks into my career at The National … I don’t have a computer station to call my own.

Yes. That is good news. That is outstanding news.

That is news that very few newsrooms in the United States have bumped into in, lo, these many years.

If you are old enough to remember when newspapers were riding high, in the U.S., you also remember times when getting to an important machine was a trick. Queues to get at pagination terminals. Computer terminals you had to share with whoever was there when you weren’t.

Not everyone had desks. Often, you couldn’t count on having the same chair, even, because the newsroom didn’t have enough seats, and they migrated when you weren’t there to protect them.

But for the last decade? In U.S. newsrooms, more desks than editors. More computers than reporters. More chairs than employees.

A photographer at the San Jose Mercury News actually compiled a haunting series of photos showing the emptying out of the Merc newsroom. Piles of phones that were unused. Office doors with no names on them. Terminals gathering dust.

That is not the situation at The National.

I had my own computer … for about a half-hour, the other day.

I talked with the tech guys, and they agreed to fire up a machine that was going unused, however briefly, in semi-awkward corner of the room. Right in front of the stacks of past papers. In part, the spot was open because its former occupant had been promoted. In part, because someone had taken the keyboard.

So we got it fixed up, found a computer and a mouse, and that was where I was going to work every day. I would have my own settings, and wouldn’t have to install them all the time, and I wouldn’t be floating from desk to desk, messing up someone else’s settings. It would be a big improvement.

So, ta-da!, all ready to go, and welcome to your own home …

Not more than an hour later, the tech guy came over. “Sorry. We’ve got two important people coming in … and we need this machine.”

This is a crowded newsroom. Not gloating here. Just saying. More than 200. In a pretty big room. But not quite big enough.

You can hardly walk from one end of the room to the other — and it’s at least 50 yards — without bumping into a half-dozen people. Walking the length of it is a lot of “sorry … excuse me … pardon me” because you’re wending your way through and around people and their chairs.

Some of the reporters have little more than a corner of a table to set up and do their work. It’s that busy. Actual desks? Don’t quite have them. A place to work and a set of cabinets on rollers is about as good as it gets. Just too many people, not enough room.

And we now know, crowded newsrooms are a good thing. It means people are still coming in. Being replaced when they leave.

I don’t know how the economics of the place work. I don’t know if we make much money or any money, with all the people here and with growing (but modest) circulation. But the backers of the newspaper are determined to give it a good long look …

And that means crowds. The sort of newsrooms you see in movies and television, with people bustling about, trying not to run into each other.

The sort of newsrooms that are disappearing in the U.S.  Where the survivors watch the room emptying out, and corners of the room going dark. Unless, of course, editorial has been moved from three rooms into two, or two floors into one, a from a room into a closet. Then you’re crowded again … but for the wrong reasons. Not because you outgrew the space you were in when things were going good.

It’s nice to not have my own place to work. As long as it’s in a situation like this, where things are all “onward and upward” … no one will hear me complain.